


A Birth and a Death on the Same Day

by resident_longwinded_anon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mark of Cain, Resurrection, Torture, Wing Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3518654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resident_longwinded_anon/pseuds/resident_longwinded_anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scars do funny things, sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Birth and a Death on the Same Day

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea about the scars last night and couldn't sleep until I wrote it. I posted a rough version on Tumblr but have since deleted it; I will post this finished version there soon.
> 
> Title from Twin Skeletons (Hotel in NYC) by Fall Out Boy. ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMxkSqz_MoA))
> 
> The MCD is temporary and the violence is show-level. (Think 4.16 "On the Head of a Pin" or 7.15 "Repo Man.") Takes place at some unidentified point in season 10 after Dean has gone darkside again.

Castiel isn't afraid, and that scares Dean most of all.

Here Dean is, trapped in a cage in his own mind, terrified out of his fucking life, but Cas is just sitting there chill as anything while Dean _tortures him_.

"This isn't you, Dean," he says, as Dean carves out a space in his chest to store all his tools.

(But isn't it?) the monster inside him mocks. (If this weren't you, I wouldn't be here. I'm you, buddy, remember?)

"I won't let you do this," Cas continues, unblinking, even as Dean flirts a sharp-edged spoon along his eyelid. "I know you."

The demon laughs inside Dean's head. (He knows you, sure. He knows the half of you that you present to the world. But you've spent more of your existence as me than you did as him, didn't you? This is the real you.)

"This isn't really you."

_I know!_ Dean screams, but it never passes his lips. It echoes through the tiny space of his brain that is still truly his, clinging to dendrites like static wool. If he were in control of his body, he'd fall to his knees from the pain of it all, but he's not. Instead, he sees his own hand reach out and grasp  Cas's knee. He grabs a hammer from the bloody chest cavity and positions it like he's giving Cas a reflex test at the doctor's. And then he brings it down with the force of forty years of torture behind it, and Cas finally cries out.

(Isn't that beautiful?) The demon rejoices. It spins the hammer through Dean's hands effortlessly. He's useless against the look on Cas's face, the horror and the shame there.

He was wrong, earlier. At least when Cas was fearless, Dean could pretend to be.

The demon tucks the hammer back with the other tools and steps back. It stretches Dean's body as far as it can go and then a little further, relishing in the pop and creak of his spine. "Look at that," it says through Dean's mouth, in Dean's voice. "I finally made the angel squeal."

Cas raises his chin. Dean tries to reach out a hand, hide the exposed throat sitting there like a moonstone, but he can't move. The demon notices his attention to it, though, and sends a sigh spiralling through their shared space. (I'm going to kill him just for you, Righteous Man,) it whispers, at the same time it creeps closer to Cas and takes a silver skewer out from its weapons stash. (I'll slash him up real pretty first, though, and then I'll hold him when he dies.)

It's a good thing Dean doesn't need to breathe, because he's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to do it anymore. Oh, god, the image is so clear in his eyes - Zach in the green room, Uriel after Alastair - wings as tall as he is, burnt into the floor so no soap or water or holy cleansing ritual would ever wipe them away.

(That's right,) the demon hisses, as it uses the skewer to poke profane Enochian patterns on Cas's arm. (We'll wander around with your angel's mark on us.)

Cas grits his teeth and keeps his eyes lifted away from the sigils on his arm, as though it hurts him to look at them. He's completely oblivious to the conversation, and Dean wishes not for the first time that angels could actually read minds. If he could just give Cas a clue to what the demon wants to do -

(Uh, uh, uh,) the demon mocks, pausing in its torture. (Can't have you thinking too independently there, sweetheart, no matter how much fun it is. It's a shame you have to miss the final show, but I'll be sure to play it for you later. Maybe I'll even give you some free time to enjoy your scars.)

Dean can feel the lights on his consciousness starting to dim, bit by bit. He struggles to keep his gaze on Cas - just to stay conscious long enough to remember the shape of his face - the shade of his eyes - a shock of dark brown hair that has grown black with blood - and now he can't see anything, but he can hear Cas's weak whimpers, and -

_ Gone. _

He's still aware of himself, in a horrible, distant sort of sense. He can't see anything, or taste it or smell it. He knows the demon is murmuring to Cas with his mouth, but he can't hear it or feel the words on his tongue. Sam told him once that Michael and Lucifer liked to play with sensory deprivation, and Dean laughed at the time. Torture, good torture, took full advantage of all five senses. That's how it was done in Hell.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Maybe it's seconds or maybe it's weeks. Hell, for all Dean knows, it could be years, but after a time light starts to creep in. It starts as a lightening of the gray, so gradual that he thinks he's imagining it, and then a voice - not Cas, not the demon, not even himself.

_Sam_ , he pinpoints, and relief washes through him, quickly followed by dread. Cas was hard enough, but if he's got his hands on Sam, now, he might as well be dead. He'd rather be dead. Why isn't he dead?

"That's a stupid question," Sam murmurs. There's a faint pressure against Dean's back, that he comes to recognize as a wall. An even lighter buzzing feeling on his arm, which Dean suspects may be Sam's hand rubbing up and down. _Give him time with his scars_ indeed.

Scent creeps in next, a terrible burning smell and the smell of curdling flesh. He's starting to see shapes more clearly - his brother in front of him, the greenish walls to either side.

"Sam?" he mutters. "That you?"

The shape-that-is-his-brother nods. "You're back, Dean. The demon is gone."

Dean tries to close his eyes, but apparently they were already closed. He probes about inside his mind for a bit, poking carefully at the dangerous corners where the monsters usually hide, but there's nothing there. No strange presence in the light, either. No Mark lying in wait to strike again. He's clean.

But he recognizes something else, too, in the twists of his neural pathways - the memories of Cas, trussed up and bleeding, a second bloody mouth gaping in his chest. Gasping in pain, crying. Because of _him_. Because of _Dean_.

Now that the demon's gone, he can say sorry. Weep at Cas's feet, more like. Beg for forgiveness. Like neither of them have done that too much already.

"Sammy?" he slurs. He's pretty sure that pale thing is his hand waving in the air, trying to grab his brother's attention, but it could just as easily be a flying fish of some sort.

"Yes?" Apparently that was his hand; Sam lowers it and sets it back on his lap gently. "How're you doing, Dean?"

"Where's Cas?" The words come out half-formed, but Sam seems to know what he's saying, if the awkward silence is anything to go by. Dean doesn't need to see his brother's face to know that something must've gone wrong. Really wrong. "Where's Cas?" he repeats, insistent.

Cas isn't dead. Cas has died three times. A fourth is - a fourth would just be -

The demon seems to have broken his tear ducts, because for some reason he's crying.

"Dean..." Sam says, all cautious-like.

He's not crying. He's not crying. _He's not fucking crying_.

"He saved you," Sam says. "I saw it."

Cas is alive. This is a prank. Cas is going to step into the room at any minute, completely healed of all injuries and totally forgiving, because damnit, Dean deserves at least one happy ending. That's the rule, isn't it? Heroes get happy endings?

"He said - " Sam says, and Dean somehow knows what he's going to say, and the thought of it makes bile rise in his throat, and no, he never really was a hero, was he? And he wants to get Sam to stop, stop talking, stop breathing, stop being, because how can anyone be if Cas is just gone? " - he loved you."

Sam steps aside, and Dean could see the body on the ground even if he were legally blind, it has that great of an effect on him. His sense of taste comes back all at once, and he knows it, intimately, can picture exactly how Cas died, doesn't need to have seen it, because it's all there in the taste - rotting flesh and dead fire and the faint, distant ozone-flavored tang of _angel_.

Dean chokes on it and falls back into unconsciousness.

 

Apparently, the burns left by the angel wings seared away the Mark of Cain. It's just - gone. Dean's skin is perfectly clean, except for the hundred thousand raised, reddened marks of feathers all over Dean's skin. They're strongest on his chest and arms - Sam tells him the demon took off their shirt before it killed Cas - but there are some that frame his face like a halo, and others that stipple his calves and feet.

Sam also tells him, two weeks after it happens, that he's pretty sure Cas knew what he was doing.

"It was really ingenious of him," Sam babbles over a mug of coffee. He tried to force one in Dean's hands, but Dean pushed it away. Alcohol or bust, he figures. Hopefully the latter. "He knew that if he died close enough to you, the burns would blot out the mark. There was some stuff in the lore about angels having that kind of power, but only if..." Sam coughs into his cup and sighs, not finishing his sentence.

"If the angel was in love," Dean finishes dully, and leaves the room.

He doesn't watch TV anymore. Doesn't eat, except for what Sam forces on him. Takes way too many painkillers, but nothing seems to affect him. He's halfway concerned the demon's immortality rubbed off on him, but he doesn't have enough energy to care about it.

He killed Cas.

He killed Cas.

With his own two hands, he slaughtered Castiel, and he doesn't even remember it.

Did he do it with that skewer, right through Castiel's pearl throat, one clean jab that covered the silver in his angel's lifeblood? Or did he smash the hammer into Cas's skull until he was a bloody pile on the floor? Angel sword? Machete? Fire? Crucifixion? Did he just strangle him?

Sam won't tell, but whenever Dean asks about it he gets this horrible, haunted look in his eyes. "You don't want to know," he tells Dean lowly over a shitty microwave-warmed burger. "Now stop asking."

Dean stops asking, but only because it doesn't matter. Whatever really happened can't be worse than his imaginings. His nightmares are even more graphic, but he can barely tell where they end and his life begins.

Maybe Cas was unconscious by the end. Maybe neither of them were actually there.

Maybe he's not here even now. Maybe this is some facsimile of reality where he escaped from his demon-self, and it's his only way of coping with the isolation inside his own mind.

Any reality he would create has Cas in it, though.

Sam is worried. Sam is always worried. "It wasn't your fault, Dean," he says on more than one occasion. "We both know it wasn't really you."

It was, though. As much as Dean personified the demon, it was more himself than all the rest of him. Even Cas knew that.

Some nights he breaks down crying on his bed, or on the roof of the bunker, or on the front porch. The tears start and they never stop, and he wakes up in a puddle that he takes care of with the same calm, unflinching despair that he uses for everything.

God, some days he's convinced he's even worse than he was post-Lucifer. At least then he had Ben, could channel his energy into something other than moping and angsting like the saddest bachelor this side of the Mississippi.

At some point, maybe three months after Cas dies, he admits it to himself: he was in love.

No, worse than that. He is in love.

Because love, it seems, transcends death. That would be a hell of a lot more comforting if he knew where he's gonna end up. And does Cas - did Cas - even have a soul? Does Cas get an afterlife?

Hell, does Dean?

It's a crying-on-the-porch night sometime in October when Dean hears a car revving in the distance. There's only two reasons someone would drive all this way. Either they're a demon, or it's Charlie come to try and cheer him up with yet another unsuccessful Game of Thrones marathon.

The only reason Dean doesn't head inside is out of the hope that it's the former.

By the sound of it, it's a really shitty car, the sort of thing Dean would mock if he weren't, well, dead inside. He's been dead as long as Cas - Hell, longer even.

He doesn't recognize the car that wobbles precariously up the gravel drive. He could probably figure out the make and model if pressed, but he doesn't give a fuck about it, so.

A figure climbs out of the car, silhouetted against the moon and stars. They're tall, but not as tall as Sam, and their gait is slightly uneven, as though they're limping. They are probably a he, actually, judging partially by the silhouette and mostly by the shitty choice of car. Every single girl he's ever known has better taste.

"Demons these days just don't have any taste," he calls across the gap between them.

The man gives a chuckle that echoes the sound of his gravel-eating car. "I fail to see how that's relevant," he says quietly. His voice stops Dean's heart.

"Okay," he stutters, once it's beating again. "I'm definitely hallucinating."

"No, Dean," the man says, and now he's close enough to see, and oh, god, Cas, it can't be, this is some awful, horrible trick. His mind has decided to spring this on him as some sort of sick revenge for killing Cas. It's irony at its finest - he killed Cas, now Cas will kill him.

"Yes," Dean says, backing up against the bunker door. "Now stop fucking with me and kill me already."

The mimic tilts his head, and it's so Cas it hurts, and Dean wants to die all over again. "I am real, Dean. Can't you tell?"

Dean laughs, but it's brittle and heavy. He's a glass paperweight, except he's hollow. No use as anything. "Even if you are Cas," he spits out, "you still want to kill me." He spreads his arms wide. "Go 'head," he says. "Crucify me."

Not-Cas stops walking.

"Is that what I did to you?" Dean asks, as if not-Cas would know. "Did I nail you to a cross? Did I scrape your guts out? Why aren't you killing me right now?"

Cas - no, not-Cas, it's _not Cas_ \- steps closer and raises a hand to trace the arch of Dean's cheek. "I would never," he says, and there's something in his eyes or his stance or his voice, and Dean knows.

"You're real," he whispers.

Cas twists twists his wrist, staring at the moving joints in wonder. His gaze drifts towards Dean and, if anything, gets more awestruck. "I do appear to be, yes."

Dean scratches at his arm absently. "I mean, you're - Jesus, Cas, you're _alive_."

Cas smiles. "I am."

This is too good to be true. Dean reaches out to touch Cas's shoulder, just to make sure it's really there. "You must hate me," he says.

"Oh, Dean," Cas tells him. "I could never."

Dean's lips itch to reach forward and kiss him. None of those sissy little build-up kisses to the neck or the eyelids either. He doesn't - Cas might just disappear, and he doesn't want to waste a single moment.

At the same time, though... "Can I - " Dean starts, and his voice breaks. "Cas, can I touch you?"

Cas shakes his head slowly and Dean's heart rolls over, but then Cas reaches out and grips his arm. "God, Dean," he says, breath hot and warm-bread levels of fragrant, "I thought you'd never ask."

 

They're curled up in bed together, now, legs tangled together and skin against skin. Dean keeps leaning forward to kiss Cas's lips, his forehead, his nose, his ears.

"You're here," he keeps murmuring. "You're really here."

Cas, for his part, won't stop tracing the shapes of his feathers on Dean's back. "I'm human now," he keeps saying, like a secret. Like he's just waiting for Dean to announce that's a deal breaker or something.

"Yeah, so'm I." Dean freckles Cas's temple with kisses. "That's a good thing, isn't it?"

Cas's hands seem to have a skill for finding the feather scars. He showers them with kisses and Dean lets himself grow warm and quiet in his arms, until he realizes that Cas is crying.

"What's wrong, baby?" he asks. The word feels so common and universal, but Cas grins like a child whenever he hears it. "You okay?"

Cas steadies and turns himself so he's facing Dean. "You killed me," he says, ever-cautious, and Dean thinks that's it, that's goodbye. Cas left him these memories so he'll have something to turn back to, but he's not that merciful. He doesn't have his wings anymore, but that doesn't mean he won't fly away. He'll just do it in that shitty little car.

"I know," Dean says, and his tear ducts are definitely broken because he's gushing like the bunker's sump pump after a bad snowmelt. "I'm sorry."

Cas trails a hand along the feather scars on Dean's face. "You did more than that, Dean."

"Don't tell me," he manages to grate out. "I don't want to know any more. You died, but you're back, and - "

"Dean." Human as he is, Cas still has the power to silence him with just a word. He tangles his fingers in Dean's hair and gives him a deep, hungry kiss full of teeth.

It's so obviously a goodbye kiss it hurts. This is it. This is the end. Cas is going to leave, Cas is going to leave _him_ , so Dean puts as much into the kiss as he can until Cas pulls away, gasping.

"Stop being afraid," Cas commands, and Dean feels his heart snap to attention. "You killed me, yes, but you also brought me back."

"I'm sorry, Cas, I know you probably don't want - what?"

Cas grabs Dean's hand and presses it to his chest. "Feel this," he murmurs, guiding Dean's fingers against a hollow in his chest. It's right in the middle, right where Dean - where the demon - carved his storage space. "I shouldn't be here, Dean," he says, mouth pressed to Dean's ear. "This should have displaced my heart."

"But - " Dean gasps.

Cas swallows the protest with a press of lips. "It doesn't hurt, Dean," he whispers. "I don't even notice it's there. But feel." He presses Dean's hand into the bowl of skin, which vibrates wildly with what Dean finally realizes his a heartbeat. "CS Lewis might have been a little misguided when it came to allegory, but there was one thing he got right. The power of love and death, freely given - it's _your love_ that brought me back, Dean. You and you alone."

Dean lets his hand curl into a soft fist in the hollow of Cas's chest. The heartbeat steadies slowly as Cas traces and retraces the feathers along his back.

"I guess neither of us got out of this without scars," Dean whispers.

Cas laughs under his breath. "You're all the more beautiful for it, though."

Dean strokes the smooth, unblemished skin of Cas's heart-space. Somehow, some way, they both made it through. "You too," he says. "You're beautiful."

Cas winds his arms tighter around Dean and smiles against his forehead. "We are," he murmurs, so quietly Dean can barely hear. "We are beautiful."


End file.
